Digital media items such as photographs and videos are typically stored in the home using conventional personal computers, laptop computers and the like. For example, family digital photographs may be stored on the hard drive of a personal computer (PC), on a CD or other computer-readable storage medium and are retrieved and displayed using suitable application software on the home PC. Whilst this is a good workable solution, there are many drawbacks. Significant effort is required on the part of the user to store the photographs and videos since the PC must be turned on and connected to the digital camera, camera phone, or other image capture device. The particular software application for copying the digital media onto the PC needs to be activated and this may be a complex operation, especially when the PC is already being used for other purposes. A software application for retrieving and displaying the digital media needs to be activated and different software applications may be required for different types of digital media such as videos and still images. In addition, the living area of the home in which a family may wish to view the digital media may not be the location of a home PC.
Once the digital media are stored it also requires significant effort for a user to retrieve and display the media items. For example, a user may scroll through pages of thumbnail images of still images or lists of file names of video clips which are difficult to interpret and understand. If the digital media are tagged in some way it may be possible to search and retrieve digital media items using key words but this requires effort on the part of the user to think of key words and enter them into a search interface. It may be possible to randomly select digital media items for display for example, using a picture show screen saver. By using a PC a user gains great flexibility and choice in the task of retrieving and displaying digital media. However, this flexibility and choice comes with the cost of increased complexity. Also, the PC itself is costly and not suited for use in a domestic living area.
Dedicated digital photo frames are known which select digital photographs from a database and display those on a dedicated screen which is designed for use in a home living area. Because these types of device are limited in the types of retrieval that are possible they are simpler to use than the PC methods described above. For example, they typically do not provide for key word retrieval and operate with a minimum of interface manipulations. Typically, a set of images is loaded onto the dedicated digital photo frame device from an SD card or USB stick for example. The images are presented in either a set manner, for example in order of time or date of capture or are completely randomized. Typically there is no mechanism for searching for images or otherwise shaping the recall of images on the device. This must be done previously on a secondary PC system before the images are loaded onto the digital photo frame device.
The embodiments described below are not limited to implementations which solve any or all of the disadvantages of known digital media retrieval and display systems.